


winning love by daylight

by Missy



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Girls, Blood and Injury, Character Growth, Character Study, Gen, Talking Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 20:25:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19216897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Mallory doesn't call the spirits, but the spirits come to her anyway.





	winning love by daylight

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Baby-sitters Club, The (Ann M. Martin), Writer’s Choice, Magical Girl AU

Mallory didn’t conjure the spirits, but they come to her. It hadn’t been a grand decision, a fateful fork in the road. She’d just picked up a book at the Stoneybrook Library Sale, a big, overly-loved volume bound in purple leather that looked like a fantasy novel. She’d expected to part the onion-skin thin pages and read about a princess lost in time.

And she did. But the princess turned out to be her.

*** 

It wasn’t a mantle that Mallory went looking for. To be honest, she’d envisioned a nice, calm normal life for herself. As an author and illustrator, naturally. Living in the country, with a horse paddock in the back.

A _normal_ horse. Not the one who introduced itself to her at the stables at top volume. Not the way they effortlessly explained that the universe would provide, keep her taking riding lessons, even if it seemed that her parents couldn’t afford the money to do so. That this horse was her ancient familiar, reincarnated through time and space, and that it was to be hers forever. 

Her name was Buttercup. And they’d be friends, it seemed, forever.

Buttercup looked like a normal horse, at first glance; and like Mister Ed, was careful not to speak around others. He didn’t tell Mallory that it knew how to fly. He definitely didn’t tell her that he could open portals to other dimensions with a simple thought. That his hooves were weapons that could be applied in vicious combat. 

Mallory would learn these things in the future. For now, she was in possession of a prophecy and a weird talking horse, and she had no idea how to cope with either.

 

*** 

The book led her to her wand - a large scepter made of green and black marbled stone, topped with a filigreed golden curls that arched upward into a shape that Mallory felt was quill-like- an appropriate gesture for a writer. It had been hidden deep within the woods behind the elementary school, and Mallory – scraped, with the frame of her glasses dented – ended up rising with the moon to find it. 

She had whined the whole way, but the result was worth the pain as the sun began to crest over the pine trees ringing the meadow.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said, rolling the smooth marble between her palms. It felt electric with energy, warm as human flesh in the way stone never actually was.

“Don’t say anything,” Buttercup said. “Just do what is necessary to make the room ready.”

“What room?”

Buttercup lifted her chin. “A conflict is coming. It’s greater than anything humanity has or will ever witness. You will be the only one who can stop the cataclysm to come. I can help to train you, and the book will allow you to prepare but only you will be able to stop it.”

Mallory felt a lump forming in her stomach. It would require a sacrifice of time and energy even bigger than the one she was already spending to keep the horse secret to make sure that everything stayed on-track. What could the universe possibly need of her? What could she do to stop what lay before her.

 

*** 

It was a lonely road she was travelling. Which was fine for an introspective person like Mallory, but hard to explain away to outsiders. Eeking out privacy was a difficult enough problem in her huge family and too-small house before this life change; now she had to battle for peace and silence more often than ever before. People like her babysitting charges, or her team of fellow sitters, could smell something wrong, but she couldn’t and didn’t confide in anyone. She knew that Kristy had some idea about what was happening, but talking to Kristy was intimidating enough when the safety of the world wasn’t on the line.

Lying to Jessi was what hurt the most. She couldn’t help but do it, but the look of hurt in her eyes when Mallory lied about where she needed to be broke Mallory’s heart. Part of being a magical girl was to lie, loudly and almost offensively, to everyone she knew.

She was getting used to it. Batgirl did it all the time, and look how she turned out.

*** 

Every morning, she rose at four before any of her other siblings got up to practice with her wand. Word by word, she learned the spells.

And, more importantly, how to defend herself.

Her mother looked in alarm at the scrapes and bumps she returned home with, but did not ask further questions. She was too smart to do so, and seemed half-afraid of the sudden burst of confidence and leadership skills that Mallory had magically sprouted over time.

So time passed. Mallory grew tougher, smarter.

Then the sky turned violet. A woman wrapped in blood red descended from on high, her eyes filled with malevolent energy. She waved her hand and the ground burt into sickeningly bright orange flame.

The forests of Stoneybrook were burning. Mallory – astride Buttercup – knew what she had to do. 

Her wand clutched in her grip, she raced to confront evil.

 

** 

Mallory knew she couldn’t stay in Stoneybrook after what she’d done, and what she’d seen. Her parents made the change easy enough. The other girls at Riverbend Hall seemed to understand her problems – if not her sacrifices. So the adjustment was easier than anticipated – and the peace and quiet she has to practice, delicious. She heard from her siblings and the girls at the Club frequently, though they never talked about what Mallory had done.

How she’d saved the world.

 

****

Months past. She and Buttercup kept their training up. 

When the ocean filled with purple lightning and the world seemed to broil, Mallory was surprised to see her classmates lining up beside her – all of them dressed in the bright blue uniforms that marked their devotion to the same cause, the same belief.

She had questions, but she’d ask Buttercup later.

It was time to save lives.


End file.
